[lbo-talk] Talk about death panels!

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Wed Sep 9 19:53:46 PDT 2009


On Sep 9, 2009, at 9:11 PM, Matthias Wasser wrote:


> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 8:51 PM, <RicardoStarkey at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Isn't it unseemly to scheme on profiting from the untimely deaths of
>> diseased people? Just me? Of course, capitalists have always
>> found a way
>> to
>> profit from death and misery, but at this juncture in history,
>> isn't this
>> plan a new low (high?) in cynicism?
>>
> Private health insurance creates bad incentives, limits access, and
> so on.
> So that's bad. But given that it already exists I don't see what
> additional
> evil is created by allowing insurers to redistribute risk among each
> other
> in this way. (Allowing them to run wild with risk redistribution is
> what led
> to the crisis in the short run, but the devil's in the details.) Are
> the
> incentives to provide shitty care amplified by this practice? I
> don't see
> how they would be on first blush, but I'm willing to find that they
> are.
>
If this idea takes hold (and why shouldn't it?) I can, with 100% certainty, predict the development in the US of an industry which had never been thought of, let alone existed, in all of human history--the manufacture of false diagnoses of fatal illnesses, with drugs to simulate the symptoms of cancer, heart disease, organ failure etc., etc., and medical laboratories and clinics to provide the diagnoses. Why? Because if you are really healthy, not fatally ill, it will let you sell your life-insurance policy at a big multiple of its real value!

Shane Mage


> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos



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